Wikimedia India chapter has organized a Wiki Academy in Jaya Engineering College in Chennai on 11 December 2011. The detailed summary below:

Introduction

The first Wiki Academy in Jaya Engineering college was organized by the Wikimedia chapter and co-hosted by Jaya FOSS Club, a faculty-student wing of Computer Science department, Jaya Engineering College which promotes and organize events related to FOSS (Free and Open Source movement) and is the only FOSS club in the whole state. Prof. Kumaran, HOD – Computer Science Dept, Prof. Prabhakaran, student volunteers of Jaya FOSS Club Naresh Aravindh, Baabu Aravind V S, Sankey Thukral and Saran Raj volunteered for conducing the event. The academy started at 10.30 AM with a formal inauguration by Prof. Natarajan, HOD – Textile Engineering who introduced the agenda of the Wiki Academy to the audience. Prof Prabhakaran then gave a brief talk about the academy and Jaya FOSS Club and gave a token of appreciation to Dr. Natarajan for the speech. Subhashish, member, Wikimedia India Chapter gave a small talk about the main agenda of the academy and connected the audience with Hisham Mundol, Consultant, India Programs, Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) via Google Hangout. Hisham interacted with the audience by giving a talk about the nature of the event, few details about Wikipedia, WMF and Chapter and foundation are trying to do in India. He answered questions raised by the audience. Nitika Tandon, Consultant, Participation at WMF was also present virtually.

Academy

How to Edit Wikipedia
Subhashish explained basics of Wikipedia, how it is edited by millions of volunteers, how Wikipedia is exclusively encyclopedic and kind of articles and notability of articles in Wikipedia, how Wikipedians communicate and form community, and organization of Wikimedia foundations and active projects. Then he took the audience through active editing by signing up, searching for articles, choosing articles to create. Then he demonstrated about creating an article by using the Edit toolbar, citing the text by searching the web and uploading and adding pictures in articles.

Q&A session

After the editing session is over there was a question and answer round where the speaker answered questions related to editing.

Closing talk

Nitika was formally introduced to the audience by Subhashish. Nitika then explained about the India Education program (IEP), how it functions and the student-teacher-foundation collaborations through the education program. She took the audience though the Pune IEP, how foundation reached to several colleges in Pune via Campus Ambassadors, engagingt of students by increasing student-teacher interaction and outcome of the program. Post to her talk there was a Q&A and interaction round.

With the closing talk from Nitika, a closing talk was delivered to the audience by the speaker. Feedback and participation forms were distributed and the audience gathered for a group photograph.

Future plans if any

Potential areas to work upon:

More technological live sessions:

Being an engineering college of more than 60 volunteers in the Jaya FOSS Club, a club promoting FOSS (Free & opensource software) initiatives this has a incubation capability to bring up more leaders in Technology. The HOD, Prof. M. Kumaran, Asst Prof. G. Prabhakaran, student volunteers Naresh Aravindh and Baabu Aravind V S showed a lot of interest for technological events in the college. WMF staff contractor Santhosh Thottingal could be contacted for a webinar with the FOSS Club members and faculty to understand their interest based on which there could be a possible technical event like a mini Hackathon in the college. The college has a decent infrastructure in terms of connectivity and outreach.

Interest group for Tamil Wiki initiatives:

The entire audience was Tamil speaking, surprisingly none of them were not aware of the existence of Tamil Wikipedia. So, further communication could be established with the Tamil Wiki Community as majority of the participants were interested for a Tamil Wiki initiatives. Sengai Poduvan, the veteran Tamil Wikipedian who was awarded as a noteworthy Wikipedian during WCI must be invited for a talk to the next Tamil Wiki Academy which will inspire the audience to contribute more for Tamil Wiki initiatives.

Foundation of a Wiki-Club:

Prof. G. Prabhakaran, Computer Science dept brought a proposal for a Wiki-Club by engaging the Jaya FOSS volunteers which could organize recurrent Wiki events in the campus. The FOSS club is already interacting with many Open source academicians, speakers and researchers from major institutes like IIT, Madras. FOSS Activities in India is taking a progressive shape and it could be used for more collaborative Wiki initiatives to bring up more editors.